InContext Solutions raises $15.2M to bring retail experiences into VR

Oct24, 2016

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Virtual reality offers businesses the ability to see consumer habits in digital environments before committing the resources to actually building out those environments in the real world.

For InContext Solutions, a major market opportunity that they’ve been able to isolate is giving retailers the opportunity to test and explore new in-store retail concepts inside virtual reality.

Today, the company announced that it has closed a $15.2 million round of funding led by Intel Capital and Beringea. The company has raised about $40 million to date. Previous investors include Plymouth Venture Partners and Hyde Park Venture Partners.

The company has largely relied on WebVR solutions previously but is looking to use this funding to more seriously approach the use of virtual reality headsets.

“This latest round of funding gives us strong strategic backers who share our vision of even more robust, fully-immersive virtual reality solutions for retail,” said Mark Hardy, CEO of InContext Solutions, in a statement. “We have long been a leader in web-based VR, and this investment allows us to aggressively develop our VR platform, further lowering costs and improving speed and revenue for our clients.”

The company’s ShopperMX platform has been a simpler way to built virtual display models and understand how certain concepts are catching users’ eyes. InContext has been working with analytics features like heat maps to help visualize how users approach new display types that are being built and proposed.

The company was started in 2009, long before consumer virtual reality began to drift back into public consumption. With virtual reality headsets, there is only more potential in gathering rich data regarding consumer attention.

This investment from Intel Capital comes after InContext Solution began a partnership with Intel to begin developing virtual reality solutions together. Intel has announced a number of VR initiatives related to its RealSense platform, including its all-in-one Project Alloy headset.